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How to Share Your Hobby with the Rest of the World and Make Money from It

2 weeks ago

Whether you love coming up with unique recipes or you can turn anything into a lovely piece of craft, there’s so much more you can do with your hobby. Yes, hobbies provide private pleasure, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to share what you love with the world. You may find that people will love your work enough to want to pay for it.

With the internet, it has become very easy to share whatever you wish with the world. It has also become possible to make a bit of cash or even an entire career sharing what you love. If you have considered doing more with your hobbies, whatever they may be, you should read on as this article shows you the possibilities.

Start a blog!

This is a clear first choice. Starting a blog is one of the most fulfilling ways to share what you love doing or creating. It is also a brilliant way to connect with other like-minded individuals who share similar interests with you.

When you start blogging and you take it seriously enough, you can actually end up making a good sum from your blog. You can run ads and campaigns, collaborate with other bloggers, and elicit writing gigs with examples of your work.

So, what are the steps to starting a blog?

Streamline your topic

It’s always a good idea to focus your blog on a niche. Since it’s clear that you would like to blog about your hobby, you already have a direction to work with. What you can do is to look at other people who blog about what you have in mind. See what they’re doing so you can figure out how yours is going to be unique and different from theirs.

Are you going to infuse more of your personal life into your blog than others are doing? Are you a funny person and can spice up your blog with humour? Whatever you decide to do, remember that passion is most important as that is what will keep you going.

Create content

It is easy to come up with an idea and fantasise about it all day, but it is difficult to be consistent and maintain your momentum as time goes on. You can test your commitment to the idea of blogging about your hobby by creating several blog posts ahead of time. You can do as many as twenty posts, so by the time you set up your blog, you’ll have tons of content to share.

You won’t post all that content at once of course, but they’ll fill in for you when you’re unable to create content for whatever reason in the future. It’s also important that you determine how often you’re willing to put up new content. A few times a week? A few weeks a month? Whatever it is, be sure you can be consistent.

Put your website together

You can always start with a free WordPress or Blogger website, meaning you won’t have to pay for hosting or a domain name. This could be the perfect option for you if you want to test the waters first. Actually, there have been a few blogs that got really popular even with a wordpress.com URL.

There are a number of limitations that come with using a free wordpress.com account, such as not being able to use Google Ads or Google Analytics. Many people opt for their own self-hosted blog right away because that’s better for them in the long run. You don’t have to pay too much for a domain name or for hosting when there are options like NZ Domain Names. Also, you can download a free WordPress theme or a cheap one.

Once you have your theme, hosting plan, and domain name, you can put them together yourself after downloading WordPress. There are tons of tutorials to show you how to do that and you won’t need any prior coding knowledge. Another option is to have a developer or a more web savvy friend do it for you.

Start an online store

Starting an online store is not as easy as starting a blog, but it might be an option for you if you’re really interested in turning your hobby into a source of livelihood. You have to prepare and plan like you would if you were starting any other business. An online store will certainly not cost as much as a brick and mortar store, but you’ll still have to make a sizeable upfront investment.

One of the easiest ways to start selling online is to start a Shopify store. It’s a platform used by many online merchants and it’s as great for a newbie as it is for a pro. If you have a blog already, you can simply add a shop to it so you won’t have to build a separate online store. This will likely work for you if your readers have indicated interest in buying your products.

If you’re not quite ready to set up your own online store either because you’re not ready to take on the financial implications or because you would like to test your market first, you can sell via a marketplace. Popular online marketplaces you can sell on include Etsy, Amazon, and EBay. You won’t have to pay to maintain your own store and you’ll be able to see the nature of demand for your products.

Sell on Instagram

Instagram has become a great place for buyers and sellers to connect due to its highly visual nature. The platform continues to look into ways they can make Instagram a better marketplace, so it’s a good place to start. Once you can take good photos, you shouldn’t have much of a problem. Plus, Instagram ads can really help to push your product in front of the right audience.

Conclusion

Don’t think too much about taking that next step to making more out of your hobby. Start with the easiest option and roll with it.

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